Berlin Sept. ’08

Last monday morning, i was sipping my cup of coffee and looking at my feeds from the Berlin CS group and two entries stuck my mind. Since two event are well worth a trip to Berlin, I quickly decided that i would go there for the weekend.

Alexis being busy with a Aikido seminar the whole weekend, i was at the same time a good opportunity to visit Ollie, an englishman living in Berlin, that i had met a month ago at an official couchsurfing meeting. I contacted him to ask if he had a spare couch for me, and he quickly replied that yes 🙂

That done, i had quite some trouble to find a ride share to Berlin, in the end i had to take a ride to some small village one hour away from Münster… at 9 am in the morning. One of the other peeps coming with us was an assistant director for the small private theater of Münster, the Borchert theater and i had a great conversation with her during the trip. Arrived in Berlin, i went to a cafe near Hackescher Markt, to work till i can meet with Olli.

In the mean time, Ollie had organized a small meeting at Hannibals. So after going to his place to drop my stuff, talk a bit and getting the keys, i went to pick up Yosuke at hi Hotel. We went to Simon Dach Strasse to get some food, and then around 9 pm joined the other 20 couchsurfers at hannibals for a great start of the evening. Around 12 the others started to leave to a club they wanted to go to. Yosuke and I stayed a little bit longer, Panorama Bar wasn’t very far away and it was still too early to go there. In order to stay a little bit more awake i used the opportunity to get some espresso ^^

Finaly we went to Panorama Bar, due to my recent adventures with them, and since the guy we wanted to see, Ricardo Villalobos, was quite famous within the “scene”, we arrived around 1:20 am to make sure we make it in reasonably early. To my surprise, there was no line, and ten minutes later we were in the club! Luckily, he also started pretty early (2 am), and we had an absolutely great night listening to a great set, dancing till we collapsed.

The next day, I was amazingly well, probably because i didn’t drunk that much. Anyway I managed to make it to Wittenberg Platz to meet Seán. We went together to the Folsom Street Fair europe… I won’t say anything about it… if you are curious ask me privately, i want to keep this blog safe for work 😛 Obviously no picture of it either. Seán is a great guy and we had some very interesting talk.

I wanted to see the Pyronale from the Teufelsberg with some other cs’er, sadly i was ten minutes late and they had already left. I wasn’t the only one though ^^! Markus, from Bern, was also late, we went there together after getting lost in the forrest. I didn’t find the fireworks that amazing, even though they were clearly better than those in Den Hag. Maybe i’m just not a firework person.

The next day, before leaving, i had the chance of taking part in a great event: Karneval der Verpeilten. Basically the closing outdoor festival for electronic music in Berlin. Near the Hauptbahnhof. With only indictation to the actual location this great map! I was really sad i had to leave to Münster, i would have liked to see the complete event, which looked really great.

Amsterdam Aug. ’08

The last destination of our trip was Amsterdam. Again we didn’t found someone in couchsurfing to host us, but it didn’t matter since Daisuke had kindly agreed to host us if we didn’t find anybody. We arrived Friday in the early evening after a little bit of trouble (i was an hour late because of a missed train, Seisa somehow managed to take a train in the wrong direction and came half an hour after me). Daisuke’s place was not only nice, it was utterly central! The only thing that gave us some bad feeling was that he slept on the ground, so that we could share his bed. We went to some nice indonesian restaurant he knew where we had a great menu, with a lot of different thing to share. Afterwards we went for a small tour, starting from Amsterdam Centraal to Rembrandt plein, through the Damrak.

Later on we went together (! Daisuke surprised me on this one) to Panama, a club who was supposed to have a good “electronic music” party. I was still in a “berlin” kind of mode… which made me believe we were really early there (1:00 am), but Amsterdam actually has more civilized hours, party’s “start” around 22:00 and usually stop around 4:00 or 6:00, a real treat! Anyway du to me not being in a great shape, and Seisa having only sandals, which aren’t that great when the floor is full of broken glass, we left the place a little bit early, even though the party was really nice and the ambience really great.

The next day we slept in again, and left quite late to go to the Kalverstraat, a shopping area of Amsterdam. Even though Seisa didn’t found anything for her (again ^^!), i cracked, the continuous exposure of shops made me buy 3 new pants, which where quite needed (no complains here). After being treated to dinner by Daisuke (we had Miso soup!), we took the train to Den Haag, where we met Qinqin and Tingting (no kidding), Qinqin is a fellow Ph.D. student of Daisuke, Tingting a friend of her. We went to the beach to see some fireworks, who were rumored to take place from 22:00 to 24:00. The fireworks actually stopped at 22:15 and we were underwhelmed to say the least. Anyway we had some good time sitting at the beach and discussing all kinds of topics. We decided to go back to Amsterdam and to put the rest of time in good use by going to some club. We went to Rembrandt plein, where you have a plethora of choices, funnily we had a lot of trouble to find the one we had set our eyes upon: Studio 80, a small door, well hidden between two large venues. A great evening with music from a DJ from Hamburg.

On Sunday, Seisa and I moved out to see a little bit more of the city, we walked to Anne Frank Huis, but the line there was so long that i didn’t wan’t to bother with it. We continued our way south along the canal, stopping somewhere for a coffee. We then hit Leidseplein, went back north from there, saw the flower market, continued till this small bridge on the Amster which name i can’t remember right now. Later in the evening we went with Daisuke to a traditional dutch cuisine restaurant, which was full of japanese, (are they all using the very same guide?). We went back home early, everyone was already focusing on the next part of the trip, going back home for me and going to rome for Seisa. We left Daisuke’s place monday morning at 5:00 for Schipol. At 11:00 i was in Muenster and at 12:00 in my office…

Canoe trip

I know I’m kinda late on this one, better late than never!

Last Sunday, I organized a canoe trip on the Werse. In the end, two people showed up, Christian, with whom i swim every sunday and Daan, a couchsurfer from Enschede. After some complication we made it to the river at about 11 am. Since Daan had his own two place kayak, we only rented a kayak, which i used, since christian had no kayaking experience. Us three being pretty ambitious, we row like mad. After one and half hour we were already pretty exhausted and decided to have lunch. The Werse is a really beautiful river. There are no roads who boards it , so both side of the river are either crowded with trees, which gives it a slightly “savage” feel, or with private houses. The  problem with this situation is that it was really hard to find a place to stop. There are no strands, and most of the places where it’s easy to stop and get to land are privately owned… After a solid lunch and some sun bathing, we went on, sadly after roughly an hour the landscape suddenly changed, and we were surrounded by Corn fields, who aren’t particularly beautiful. Since it was already a good distance, we decided to turn back. On our way bak, we stopped at a bar on the river for a fresh beer ^^;

 

We came back around 6pm, completely wasted, but happy. It’s definitively a beautiful trip and i hope to do it again later this august. Here some pick’s of it. Since I’m pretty scared of destroying my equipment, i couldn’t take some on the water, who would have been much more beautiful.

Paris

Here some news. Last week-end i went to Paris:

Flash Week End 12

Je continue de ratrapper mon retard sur le blog.

Voila donc pour le w.e. du 14 au 16.

Vendredi soir, je suis allé a un concert de DJ Mehdi, un francais qui fait de la musique electronique (proche de Daft Punk et Justice que je vais voir ce soir). Le concert était très bien, l’ambiance très en feu. Vers la fin du concert tout le monde était sur la scene a danser! cela m’a permi de prendre des photos de très près, chose pratique car sinon avec mon flash et dans l’obscurité ca sert à rien…

Flash Week End 11

Je sait je suis plus qu’en retard. Mais bon, mieu vaut tard que jamais!

Flash Week End 10

Je continue ma série des entrées tardives…

De nouveau un week end assez chargé. Vendredi soir, je suis allé chez Emmanuel pour prendre des clefs. J’avais prévu de rester tard en ville et il avait accepté de m’héberger. Après être rester un peu chez lui, je suis allé dans la mission, à 16th et Guerrerro. C’est un coin remplis de bar très sympa, beaucoup de vie. J’avais rendez-vous avec des gens à neuf heure étant donc assez en retard, j’ai essayé de leur envoyer un texto. Manque de bol il ne m’ont pas répondu. J’ai donc commencer a quadriller tous les bars du coins, chose assez énervante car ils ont tous un contrôle d’identité a l’entrée, l’alcool n’étant autorisé permis qu’a partir de 21 ans. Heureusement, j’ai rencontré d’autre gens que je connaissais pas hasard! Je suis resté avec eux pendant un bout de temps, puis finalement j’ai rencontrer les gens avec qui je devais sortir ce soir.

Flash Week End 9

Je sais, je suis assez en retard pour cette entrée… Mais j’ai été empêché un peu près chaque jour.

Enfin mon week-end a commencé vendredi. J’ai rencontré Emiliano et quelques autres couchsurfer. On voulait manger ensemble puis aller dans un bar. Nous sommes allé dans un restaurant japonais. J’ai mangé des sushis pour la première fois! Ça s’appelle un dragon roll et c’est des sushis au concombre (pas masqué) à l’anguille et au crevettes, avec une sauce très forte à la moutarde. C’était absolument délicieux je me réjoui déjà à l’avance pour la prochaine fois que je vais en manger. Au début nous étions cinq deux israéliens et deux italiens, mais les deux israéliens devais repartir pour voir un évènement d’art (actionpainting). Je me suis donc retrouvé seul avec Emiliano (vous avez déjà vu une photo de lui) et Rossella . Tout deux étaient très sympa même si le fait de retrouver des compatriote leur donnaient envie de parler en italien (une très belle langue même si je n’en comprend presque rien).Rossella, avec qui j’ai eu l’occasion de parler plus ces dernier temps (elle est assi dans un café juste a coté de moi et travail pendant que j’écris cette entré) est une éditrice de Bande Dessiné (surtout japonaise mais aussi française) enItalie! On a pas mal parlé boutique ^^!

Flash Week End 8

Vive le stress!

Ce Week-end a bien commencé. J’étais invité chez Peter et Emmanuel pour manger le soir. Peter voulais que je vienne a 19 heure et demis. Heureusement, je lui avais dit que je ne pourrai venir qu’a huit heure et demis, sur quoi il me répond:”très bien comme ça je n’aurai pas de scrupule a faire des heures sup!” Monsieur “heure sup’ ” donc, est arrivé a 22:15! Emmanuel et moi étions déjà assez fatigué. On a quand même passé une bonne soirée, Peter m’a fait rêver en me montrant ses photos du Vietnam et surtout du japon. Plein de jardin sous la neige (notamment le pavillon doré), rien que du beau. J’ai passez la nuit chez eux.

Flash Week End 7

Un week end de plus passé a San Francisco, c.a.d. un week end de moins a passer dans cette superbe ville. Mais je digresse.